Custom foods

When USDA, Open Food Facts, or your meal library doesn't have what you ate, add a custom food. Once added, it shows up in your Recents like anything else.

When to add

Good cases:

• Home-cooked recipes — your specific chili, pesto, lasagna, etc., where the macros depend on your portion sizes.
• Restaurant items not in the databases — small local restaurant, food truck, etc.
• Ethnic / international foods — if USDA misses it and OFF's coverage is thin.
• Trade-name products that aren't in OFF — niche supplements, regional brands.
• Compounded protein shakes / pre-workout / etc. — anything where you mixed multiple ingredients and want to log the combo as one entry.

How to add

1. Log page → Food → + Add custom food (or from the food search page when no results match).
2. Fill in:
   • Name (required) — what it is.
   • Brand (optional) — manufacturer or restaurant.
   • Emoji (optional).
   • Serving size description — "1 cup," "1 piece," "100 g," etc.
   • Serving amount + unit (optional) — for consistent scaling.
   • Macros — calories, protein, fat, carbs.
   • Micronutrients (optional) — sodium, fiber, sugar, vitamins, minerals.
3. Save.

The food is added to your library, immediately searchable, and appears in Recents the next time you open food search.

Plan limits

Tier	Custom foods
Free	25
Premium	50
Unlimited	Unlimited

Existing custom foods over the cap aren't deleted — you just can't add new ones.

Editing

Tap any custom food in your library to edit. Changes affect future logs only — past food log entries keep the macros they had when logged.

Deleting

Deleting removes the custom food from your library. Past log entries using it remain (with the macros they had at log time).

Tips for accurate custom foods

• Weigh once, log forever. For a recipe you'll eat repeatedly, weigh the total batch and divide by servings. Enter macros per serving.

• Don't overthink micronutrients. Calories + protein are the most-used numbers. Fat, carbs, fiber are useful. The other micros (vitamins, minerals) are less common to track and lower priority.

• For recipes with many ingredients, you can either:

  • Add each ingredient as a separate food and save them as a meal, or
  • Sum the macros yourself and add the recipe as one custom food.

  Meals work better for things that change slightly each time. Custom food works better for things you make identically every time.

• Brand matters less than you'd think. USDA and OFF have generic versions of most things; "chicken breast" doesn't usually need a brand-specific custom.

Per-entry macro overrides

Sometimes you don't want to create a whole custom food, you just want to adjust one entry. Two ways:

• Edit the food log entry directly. Tap the entry → edit → adjust macros. The override applies to that entry only.
• Adjust serving count. If a food's "1 serving" is 1 cup but you ate 1.5, set serving count to 1.5. Cleaner than overriding macros.

Use full custom foods only when you'll repeat the entry. For one-offs, per-entry edits are simpler.

Common questions

"Can I import a CSV of custom foods from another tracker?" Not currently. You can create them manually. For users migrating from MFP, see Migrating from MyFitnessPal — the practical guidance is to add the ~20 foods you eat most often and let Recents do the rest.

"What if I share a saved meal with someone — do my custom foods come along?" There's no sharing feature. Each user's custom foods are private to their account.

"Why can't I delete a USDA / OFF result from search?" Those are external data. You can't remove them. You can favorite the ones you use and they'll outrank the noise.

Privacy

Custom foods are included in your export and removed on deletion.

Related

• Log a meal — using foods after creating them.
• Saved meals — for combos.
• Food data sources — where the database results come from.